Education Week - September 18, 2013 - 5

EDUCATION WEEK
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SEPTEMBER 18, 2013 www.edweek.org
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REPORT
ROUNDUP
No Protections for Students
Improperly Placed in Special Ed.
Children mistakenly identified by their schools as having disabilities
may not bring claims under the main federal special education
law, despite a recognition by Congress of the problem of
overrepresentation of minority students in special education, a
federal appeals court has ruled.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd
Circuit, in Philadelphia, said that a Pennsylvania family made
“emotionally compelling” arguments about the problem of misidentification
of minority children for special education.
But there is no indication that the definition of “child with a
disability” in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act “includes
children who are mistakenly identified as disabled, but
who are, in fact, not disabled,” the court panel said in a unanimous
opinion.
The ruling came in a case brought by an African-American student
and her mother in the Lower Merion, Pa., school district. The
student, identified as S.H., and her mother had numerous interactions
with school officials over the child’s school progress. By 5th
grade, S.H. was placed in special education for a perceived learning
disability. Her mother went along with an individualized education
program despite her daughter’s objections to receiving services.
An independent evaluation administered when S.H. was in
10th grade concluded that the student’s designation as learning
disabled was, and always had been, erroneous. S.H. was not in
special education for her last two years of high school.
The family sued the school district seeking compensation under
the IDEA, as well as claims of intentional discrimination under the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities
Act of 1990.
In its Sept. 5 decision in S.H. v. Lower Merion School District,
the 3rd Circuit court panel affirmed, holding that the IDEA allowed
claims to be brought only on behalf of students with disabilities.
—MARK WALSH
CURRICULUM
“Gallup Poll Social Series: Work
and Education”
Ask a child to name a favorite
class, and odds are you’ll hear two
letters: P.E. Ask an adult which
subject has been most valuable in
life, and the most popular answer
turns out to be math.
That’s according to new survey
results by the Gallup organization.
About one-third of adults (34
percent) picked math. The next in
line was English, at 21 percent,
followed by science at 12 percent.
Science is getting more popular,
though. In a similar 2002 survey,
just 4 percent of adults picked
that subject.
The results are based on telephone
interviews with a random
sample of 2,059 U.S. adults.
—ERIK A. ROBELEN
CHARTER SCHOOLS
“Is There Empirical Evidence That
Charter Schools ‘Push Out’
Low-Performing Students?”
There is no statistical evidence
that charter schools are “pushing
out” low-performing students at a
rate higher than for regular public
schools, according to a study
published this month in the journal
Educational Evaluation and
Policy Analysis.
The study, by Ron W. Zimmer,
any more applications, however.
It had initially revoked two of
the licenses, but reversed course
after voting to keep a third district’s
license intact.
The panel had suspended the licenses
last month after Attorney
General Dustin McDaniel issued
an opinion saying the law wasn’t
for public schools.
State law prohibits guns on
campus, except for licensed security
guards.
—ASSOCIATED PRESS
GED Test Prep, Support
To Be Offered Online
To help individuals prepare for
the new General Educational Development
Test, the GED Testing
Service will offer individualized
online support starting in late
November.
The credential test, which kicks
in in January, will be more rigorous
and offered exclusively on
computer.
The new MyGED Web portal
allows test-takers to register
online, find nearby testing locations,
learn about local adult
education programs, and take
practice tests. Students will get
immediate feedback on how they
do on the practice tests and suggestions
for where to focus their
studying to improve.
Under the new model, students
will be able to take the five sections
of the GED test individually
by subject (mathematics, social
studies, science, and language arts)
over time. They will also receive
the results immediately online.
—CARALEE J. ADAMS
Minneapolis to Settle
Suit by Teen Mothers
The Minneapolis school board
has approved a $400,000 settlement
in a lawsuit on behalf of more
than 600 young mothers who were
taught by unlicensed teachers.
Broadway High School serves
girls who dropped out of school and
then returned as young mothers. A
district investigation in 2011 found
that 13 people taught students at
Broadway without proper teaching
licenses or waivers that would have
let them teach temporarily.
Superintendent Bernadeia
Johnson said the settlement will
help the 657 affected students
who attended Broadway from the
2008-09 through 2010-11 school
years achieve their educational
goals.
—AP
CORRECTION
The timeline accompanying a
story about accrediting teacher
education programs in the Sept. 11,
2013, issue of Education Week gave
an incorrect name for the accrediting
group, the Council for Accreditation
of Educator Preparation.
No Bounce-Back Seen in States’ K-12 Spending
“Most States Funding Schools Less Than Before
the Recession”
State education budgets still haven’t recovered
sufficiently from the Great Recession in 2007,
concludes a 48-state report released last week
by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
According to the Washington-based research
group, at least 34 states are financing public
schools at lower levels this school year than they
did for the 2007-8 school year, on a per-student
basis and adjusted for inflation. And 13 states
have cut per-student spending by more than 10
percent over that time—two of them, Alabama
and Oklahoma, by more than 20 percent since
the financial crisis. Despite rising tax revenues
across most of the country, 15 states scaled back
per-student spending on K-12 from last school
year to this one.
At the local level, the report finds, districts
cut about 324,000 jobs during the recession
and its aftermath. One reason is that while
the fiscal situation overall is improving, the
picture is not totally sunny. Local property-tax
revenues declined 2.1 percent from March 2012
to this past March compared with the previous
12 months.
Even in states where education spending is
on the rebound, the center argues that those
increases often don’t make up for the frantic reductions
states made during the recession’s most
dire moments. New Mexico lawmakers approved
a $72 per-student funding increase this year, the
authors note by way of example, but during the
previous five years combined, they eliminated
$946 in per-student money.
“At a time when states and the nation are trying
to produce workers with the skills to master
new technologies and adapt to the complexities
of a global economy, this decline in state educational
investment is cause for concern,” the report
says.
–ANDREW UJIFUSA
> > For links to these reports, go to www.edweek.org/go/rr
an associate professor of public
policy and education at Vanderbilt
University, and Cassandra M.
Guarino, an Indiana University
associate professor of educational
leadership and policy studies,
examined six years of data from
an anonymous large urban district
with a significant number of
charters.
The researchers conclude that
although low-performing stu-
TEENAGERS
“Longitudinal Links Between
Mothers’ and Fathers’ Harsh
Verbal Discipline and Adolescents’
Long-Term Conduct Problems and
Depressive Symptoms”
Even when a family has an otherwise
warm relationship, parents
who yell at their children
likely just make bad behavior
worse, according to a University
of Pittsburgh study set to be published
next year in the journal
Child Development.
The study looks at 967 teen-
agers and their parents from
10 public Pennsylvania middle
schools. Over two years, participants
finished surveys about
mental health, child-raising tactics,
and relationship quality. The
researchers said schools can help
to “target conduct problems in
youth and also to reach parents
STUDENT DISCIPLINE
“Arresting Development: Student
Arrests in Connecticut”
The number of students arrested
in school in Connecticut has declined
in recent years, but many
of those arrests were avoidable,
according to a report from Connecticut
Voices for Children, an
advocacy group.
The number of students ar-
rested in school declined from
3,396 to 3,183 from 2007 to 2010,
but many were arrested for such
behaviors as insubordination that
might not normally be considered
criminal, the report says. It also
notes that 59 percent of schools
had higher arrest rates for black
students than for white students
and makes recommendations for
improvement.
—JACLYN ZUBRZYCKI
PARENTS AND SCHOOLS
“Parent and Family Involvement
in Education”
A national survey finds that
most parents are attending their
schools’ parent-teacher conferences,
receiving school notes and
emails, and helping their children
with homework.
But the same federally funded
National Center for Education
Statistics survey also found that
a smaller percentage of parents
volunteer at their schools, and
that low-income parents and
those who don’t speak English
are less likely to receive specific
emails or notes from school about
their children.
The survey is based on responses
of more than 17,000 parents of
K-12 students.
—KARLA SCOON REID
For links to these reports, go to
www.edweek.org/go/rr.
dents do leave charter schools at
a slightly higher rate than higherperforming
ones, such patterns
are consistent with student-exit
rates in regular public schools
nearby.
—KATIE ASH
“The Influence of Childhood
Aerobic Fitness on Learning
and Memory”
Higher levels of aerobic fitness
can bolster a child’s ability to
learn and remember information,
according to a study published
last week in the online
journal PLOS ONE.
Forty-eight 9- and 10-year-olds
were asked to learn the names of
regions on two separate maps.
Participants used two different
study methods: either strictly
studying the map or interlacing
studying with testing on the regions
and locations.
The researchers discovered that,
overall, the interspersed-studyingand-testing
method helped children
of all fitness levels retain
information better than studying
only; both groups performed about
as well that way. But the more-fit
children outperformed the less
fit in the study-only condition.
—BRYAN TOPOREK
5
through the messages they send
home with their children,” the
study concludes. —ROSS BRENNEMAN
LEARNING AND FITNESS
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Education Week - September 18, 2013

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